"News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, September 2019

Shroud of Turin News - September 2019
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: August 2019, part #1] [Next: October 2019, part #1]

This is the September 2019 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have listed below linked news article(s) about the Shroud in September as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The article's words are bold to distinguish them from mine.

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News:
• "Scientists Claim to Discover Traces of Byzantine Coins on the Shroud of Turin," Greek Reporter.com, Nick Kampouris, September 4, 2019 "According to a recent study published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, scientists claim that they have found traces of Byzantine coins on the famous Shroud of Turin, believed to be the linen cloth in which the dead body of Jesus Christ was wrapped. Speaking at a conference in Canada recently, researchers from US universities and the University of Padua in Italy claimed that their study discovered elements of electron, gold, silver and copper on the linen cloth of the Holy Shroud. By "electron" is meant "electrum ... [Right (enlarge[2]) ... the Latinized form of the Greek word ... elektron ... referring to a metallic substance consisting of gold alloyed with silver"[3] When they examined coins from the Byzantine Empire dating back to the 1000s and 1100s, they astoundingly discovered the exact same amounts of these elements on the ancient coins as well. According to the scientists’ remarks, there was a `full correlation' between the metallic traces found on those particular coins and on the fabric of the Holy Shroud. This has led the researchers to now hypothesize that Byzantine pilgrims rubbed their own coins on the cloth, to create what are considered `second-degree relics,' which are widely common among Christians, who often touch and rub sacred objects ... if the new discovery is true, then the linen cloth was already being venerated by Christians during the 11th century AD ..." See also: "Traces of Byzantine coins found on the Holy Shroud," Archaeology Wiki, 10 September 2019; "Traces of possible Byzantine coins found on Holy Shroud Would push back 14th-C carbon dating," ANSA, 11 September 2019; "Gold dust may prove Shroud of Turin existed before carbon-date of 14th century," Aleteia, 20 September 2019. After emailing Joe Marino last night asking if he had more information on this, I found the abstract of Fanti and Furlan's paper in Science Direct: Fanti, G. & Furlan, C., 2019, "Do gold particles from the Turin Shroud indicate its presence in the Middle East during the Byzantine Empire?," Journal of Cultural Heritage, Vol. 38, 2019, 8 August, pp. 221-230. And then Joe sent me a PDF of the entire article! Joe told me that, "Fanti was supposed to have given a paper on it in Canada but he ended up not going." According to the article's abstract:

"This process indicated a connection between the micro-particles and the Byzantine coins. In particular, many samples of gold-silver alloy possibly containing copper residual similar to the famous Byzantine Electrum have been detected. It is well known that the Electrum gold-silver alloy is not frequent in the gold coinage of ancient time. The presence of this alloy can be considered typical of the Byzantine Empire ... Evaluation of these results, therefore, is compatible with the Shroud's presence in the Byzantine Empire in the period up to 1204 A.D., as many historical clues indicate"[4].

This just adds to the mountain of evidence that the Shroud existed long before the 1988 radiocarbon dating's 1260-1390 = 1325 ±65. Clearly a medieval forger would not likely have known about electrum, let alone use it, and nor would he have `salted' his alleged forged Shroud with pure 24 carat gold!

Editorial
Posts: In September I blogged 4 new posts (latest uppermost): "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Sixteenth century (1)," - 25th; "`News and Editorial,' Shroud of Turin News, August 2019," - 16th; "`Is the Shroud of Turin authentic? Or is it a forgery?' #1," - 8th; and "`News and Editorial,' Shroud of Turin News, July 2019," - 2nd.

Updates In September, from memory, there were no significant updates in the background of my past posts.

Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. In September, as can be seen above, I didn't blog any posts post on this topic.

My book: In September I continued writing in Word, Chapter 3, "The man on the Shroud" and in parallel also in Word, "Problems of the Forgery Theory." However, see my post of 04Nov19 where I announced that I was getting too bogged down with fine details, such that I had become increasingly worried that at almost 73 years of age, I may never finish my book. So I decided to start posting here on my blog an online version of my book, with the same name.

Pageviews: At midnight on 30 September, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 1,102,383.

This compares with 940,492 at the same time in September 2018. That is 142,970 pageviews over the year, or an average of ~392 pageviews per day.

Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for September (highest uppermost) as: "Problems of the Turin Shroud forgery theory: Index A-F," Jan 20, 2016 - 132; "Problems of the Turin Shroud forgery theory: Index S-Z," Jun 18, 2016 - 113; "`News and Editorial,' Shroud of Turin News, July 2019," Sep 2, 2019 - 87; "Is the Shroud of Turin authentic? Or is it a forgery?' #1," Sep 8, 2019 - 78; "Introduction to my The Shroud of Turin (TSoT) blog!," Jun 30, 2007 - 72.

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. "File:Electrum on quartz Telluride (cropped).jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 4 November 2019. [return]
3. Fanti, G. & Furlan, C., 2019, "Do gold particles from the Turin Shroud indicate its presence in the Middle East during the Byzantine Empire?: Abstract," Science Direct, 2 July. [return]

Posted: 5 November 2019. Updated: 24 February 2020.